


Now, tell me, is it over now?

by thegrumblingirl



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Angst, Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Booker got a second chance, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Missing Scene, between episode 1 and 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 18:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?He fell to his knees.Blood dripped from the tip of his nose onto the carpet.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so I've been having Bioshock Infinite plot bunnies -- this is the first and more straightforward of the two, because it's mostly canon-compliant. The second story, which I hope to get around to writing and posting soon, will take in one of many, many possible universes, at least until time catches up with them and the timeline resets, and will explore a very different turn of events following Elizabeth becoming Comstock's true successor. Buuut that's not the point today, today the point is: my combined and collected angst over Elizabeth trading in omniscience and croissants for death and mildew.
> 
> Title and tagline taken from the song Gold Dust Woman by Julia Holter. (No, it is no coincidence that this was kicked off by the song that Bethesda used for the trailer for Dishonored 2.)

 

He misses Elizabeth.

When he’d come to in his office, he didn’t remember right away, he didn’t know. He didn’t know _why_ he was calling for Anna, staggering up from his chair, nearly tripping over his own feet. He didn’t know why his heart was racing as he pushed open the door to her nursery (it was barely worth calling it that). The little music box next to her crib was still playing the song it had started only minutes ago (a million million lifetimes and a baptism ago). His heart in his throat, he stepped closer. Anna looked up at him, half-asleep, but making every effort to perk up at the sight of her father.

He fell to his knees.

Blood dripped from the tip of his nose onto the carpet.

 

 

 

 

“Porridge and peas,” Rosalind Lutece frowned at her brother, watching through a tear they had opened so many times before, to so many different lighthouses. That day, they would close it for good.

“It seems the Universe also has a vested interest in preventing paradoxes from collapsing,” Robert observed, coming to stand beside her. “Constants and variables — in a million million universes, they are the constant at the eye of the storm now. Complicated—”

“— space-time events. We would know,” Rosalind finished for him. “But if Zachary Comstock is the variable, and the choice in the river is the fixed event…”

“Then what is the new constant?” Her brother shot her a look as though she really ought to know. “The same it always was. DeWitt’s willingness to give his life for hers.”

 

 

 

 

He didn’t get to tell her how sorry he was, he didn’t get to promise to do better in another universe — in all other versions of his life that remained. He thinks of the ones who never sold Anna in the first place, and he wishes he could have been one of them.

He misses her desperately.

Even though she is right in front of him.

Some nights, he wakes in a cold sweat, a scream lodged deep in his throat, and when he does he fumbles for the light next to his bed and raises his hands in front of his eyes. There is no brand, no “AD” scarred into the back of his right hand, no feathers and talons sprouting from his left.

He remembers. Sometimes, it’s hazy, as though behind a veil, other days the memory is as clear as the sky, and he dreads to look up for fear of seeing the silhouette of a zeppelin crossing over New York.

He stopped drinking, and he worked and worked until he could afford a better place to live. Whenever he catches himself thinking about odds and races, he reminds himself of the life he gambled away. He clenches his fist and moves on to the next case.

 

 

 

 

 

When Anna is 5, she is sitting on a pile of blankets near the tiny, rickety desk in his bedroom, playing as he works. It’s a missing persons case, given up on by the police. The parents had come to him for help, God knows why, and he feels something tug deep at the back of his brain when he reads the file. A little girl, Sally, taken in broad daylight, and no ransom demand. It’s a job like any other, except it involves a little girl, and he finds himself stealing glances at Anna more than reading the words in front of him. It’s more personal than it has any right to be, even if it is about a kid, and something’s rippling through him like the remnants of a Vigor sample, but it stops before it can become a fully-formed thought, or a memory. He’s going to back to reading, when there’s a knock on the outer door to the office.

He picks up the file, giving Anna the look he always does that says to stay put, and steps into the other room, closing the door behind him.

“Come in,” he calls, putting the file down on the somewhat sturdier front room desk, and turns to greet whatever lost soul had made it to seek his services this time.

The door opens. He blinks.

He starts towards her, but stops. It’s _her_ , he knows, not one of the others. He can’t help but look at the closed door leading to his room, to Anna, wondering whether, if he speaks, the entire universe will come down unravelling around them.

“Elizabeth,” is all he says, all he can say. Her hair is long again, longer than he remembers, and it’s darker, too. She’s wearing make-up and it’s impossible for him to tell how old she is, now. Perhaps if he saw her eyes, but her gaze is averted, resting on her shoes.

Four years, and he never got to tell her he missed her.

She says it first.

They don't say anything for a while after that.

“Do you want to — _can_ you — meet her? She’s in my room,” he asks quietly. He doesn’t ask, _Why are you here?_ He doesn’t say, _I remember everything, and sometimes when I wake up from a nightmare about a city in the clouds, I know I’d do it all again._

Elizabeth hesitates, still unable to meet his eyes, but she nods. He nods, then, too, doesn’t ask her if it’s safe, and the part of her that’s still clinging to hope appreciates that.

He does turn again as he moves for the door. “I… I would like to tell her the truth one day,” he admits. This makes Elizabeth’s eyes snap up to meet his, and he nearly chokes on air. Her eyes are so wide and blue, and so familiar and completely different. Her eyes have seen behind all the doors, and behind so many, she’s seen only suffering. Behind one, she’d seen _him_. When she doesn’t reply, he makes himself go on. “I wanna let her decide, for better or for worse, if she ever wants to see my face again, once she’s old enough. I’m not keeping any more secrets from my daughter.” _From you._

“Maybe just… call me a relative of her mother’s. For now.”

There’s a smile pulling on the corners of Booker’s mouth she can’t decipher.

Slowly, he reaches for the doorknob. Giving him another nod, Elizabeth tells him she is ready. Ready as she’ll ever be.

Booker opens the door, poking his head in first, shielding Elizabeth from view. “Anna? Sweetheart, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

He pushes the door open the rest of the way, and Elizabeth cranes her neck to peer into the room, coming face to face with a miniature version of herself in a blue dress.

“Auntie Elizabeth!” Elizabeth barely has time to throw Booker a wide-eyed look before she bends, as if guided by invisible strings, to catch the child in her arms.

Endless questions later — questions that led her through a labyrinth of half-lies and lies close enough to the truth to hold up against an inquisitive and precocious five-year-old, questions that made her laugh and want to cry in never-ending turns — Anna is finally persuaded to lay down for her afternoon nap.

“But I want to talk more to Auntie Elizabeth!” she murmurs even as she's fighting to keep her eyes open. Booker picks her up from her perch next to Elizabeth and gently bundles her in his arms. “You will, sweetheart. Just not today.”

Elizabeth watches as he carried her to the room next to his own. Watches as Booker makes promises Elizabeth cannot keep. Seeing her — herself — in his arms, small and secure, definitely makes her want to cry.

When Booker comes back into the room, smiling, she doesn’t know what to say.

“Why?”

Booker doesn’t ask her to elaborate. Instead, he points at the wall opposite the desk. Elizabeth had settled on the floor next to Anna, but now she gets up to inspect the sparse collection of photos. There are photos of Booker’s regiment, predictably, reminding him of his past, present, and future all the same, of his regret. But then there’s a photo of a woman who looks so much like Anna, like herself, and Elizabeth feels much worse than crying when she realises it’s her mother. The mother she never knew, never had — she’d poked around, of course, but she could never bring herself to actually seek out the newlywed DeWitts, Abigail heavily pregnant and grinning at her husband.

She looks at it for a long time, and Booker is quiet through all of it. But she knows it’s not he one he wanted her to see, so she forces herself to move on.

And sees herself. Truly, this time. “How…?”

It has to have been one of the photos during her… observation on Monument Island. Undoubtedly, the Luteces had given Booker one of those images, along with the key to her tower. A means of recognising her.

“It survived the… timeline reset,” Booker stumbles over the technical terminology. She looks at him over her shoulder, and he shrugs. “The Luteces aren’t exactly subtle,” is all he offers, and she knows what he means. He points at the photo. “I still had it in my pocket after I came to. My brand was gone, and the knife wound along with all the other scrapes, but… the photo…”

“You put it up,” Elizabeth breathes, and turns to look at him. She doesn’t know why it survived the timeline unravelling, she doesn’t care.

_The Universe doesn’t care._

Or perhaps it did. Once.

“You put it up,” she repeats, prompting. He looks back at her, sheepish, but his eyes are pleading.

“I missed you,” is all he says.

Impulsively, Elizabeth steps close in three quick strides and hugs him where he’s leaning against his desk.

Booker freezes for the tiniest moment, before he remembers. Anna has taught him to accept affection when given freely, and he had vowed to always accept it from his daughter. So he envelopes Elizabeth in his arms, resting his cheek on the top of her head.

“I was hoping your timeline would reset.” Her voice is a little muffled by his shirt. “I wanted you to have this. I wanted _us_ to have this. Anna and… me.”

“You were?” _After all I did to you_ , goes unsaid, but Elizabeth hears it over and over, rippling through oceans and rivers, and doors. She presses closer.

“Out of all of them, you deserved a second chance. Booker… you were my only friend.”

His arms around her tighten. “Still am.”

She steps away, smiling faintly. “I know.” Booker wants to say something else, but she beats him to it. “Thank you for this. Thank you for letting me see her.”

He frowns. “You can come by anytime, you know. You will always be welcome here.” Were. Are. Always will be.

Her smile cracks, and his face falls. “I’m… we’re not going to see you again, are we?”

She doesn’t answer, but her mouth turns down in the way she used to have when she was willing herself not to cry. Anna does that, too.

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t—”

“Please.” He’s not above begging, not when he’s just got her back.

She sighs. “Remember when I… when I drowned Songbird? Where I took us?”

He nods silently.

“It’s called Rapture, and I… I have unfinished business there.” Her guard is up and he knows she shouldn’t say any more, but the DeWitts never knew to leave well enough alone.

“Let me come with you.” It's against all reason, but he has to. She has to know that he would follow her anywhere.

Her eyes widen and she shakes her head vehemently.

“No, you can’t. That Booker is already gone, and I can’t… You have to take care of Anna.”

“Then bring me back here when we’re done. Right back.”

“Booker… I’m going somewhere I have no business being,” she explains, willing him to understand.

His blood runs cold. “What about the Luteces? They used to pop up wherever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Hell, they still do.”

“They can’t save me. Not from down there.” There is steel in her voice.

“Why?” he demands, and it's so easy to tell now where she gets it from.

“Because I don’t want them to," she admits, and he shatters.

“Elizabeth, you can’t— after everything you went through— Elizabeth, I can’t… I can’t lose you, not again.”

“You already have.” That smile again, like she knows something he doesn’t. “And you’ve won me back,” she adds, her eyes flicking in the direction of Anna’s room. “I feel what every version of me feels, Booker. And if I do this one last thing… then the circle will be broken.”

“What about Paris?” His voice is small, and filled with guilt, his gaze darting away from her.

“Take Anna, one day.” His eyes come back to hers. “I’ll always be with you, Booker. I promise.”

She feels a tingling in her fingertips and she knows it’s time. She's so very, very tired. She steps forward to wrap her arms around him carefully one more time. Her last, but not Anna's. When she pulls away, he ducks his head to press a kiss to her forehead.

“Goodbye, Elizabeth.”


End file.
